County commission opposes regional sewage plant

Geoff Hamill
Staff Writer

It’s the county commission versus the public service district in the latest battle over a regional sewage plant.

The Pocahontas County Commission is intervening with state agencies to stop construction of a regional plant, a project the Public Service District (PSD) has struggled with for years.

On Monday, the county commission mailed letters to the Public Service Commission (PSC) and the funding agency, the Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council (IJDC), in an attempt to halt the project.

After years of debate, the PSD selected a plant design on February 24 to send to the IJDC and PSC for approval. The proposed plant, a one-half million gallon facility to be built on Snowshoe Drive, would serve all of Snowshoe and parts of the valley along Routes 219 and 66.

Commission president Martin Saffer said he and fellow commissioner David Fleming question the need for a regional plant and compared the project to a runaway train.

“The project still seems to have a life of its own,” he said. “First of all, as Mr. Fleming rightly points out, we’re still not sure what the need is. What is the need for a regional project? Why is there such a momentum? This idea got on the track quite a few years ago and seems to be going down this track with a great momentum like a big train.”

Saffer said the PSD failed to consider the viewpoints of those affected by the project.

“The project still has not been fully responsive to the input of a whole lot of very interested people,” he said. “That would be people at Snowshoe who have condominiums; that would be people who live in Slaty Fork; that would be people who love the county and the environment and wonder if this is destructive or protective of that and what new technologies are being overlooked.”

“It seems the PSD gives lip service to these different inputs, but the train doesn’t slow down,” he added.

At the March 3 commission meeting, Saffer and Fleming voted to send a letter to the IJDC requesting that the agency stop further funding for the project. Commissioner Reta Griffith was not present for the vote.

The letter harshly condemns the PSD’s planning process.

“Specifically, a great need for change has arisen due to the Pocahontas County Public Service District’s (PSD’s) demonstrated inability to represent the community’s needs and wishes in its execution of the proposed Snowshoe/Slatyfork regional sewage project,” the letter reads in part.

At a February meeting, the commission voted 2-1 to send a letter to the PSC, urging the agency to assist with the creation of a separate public service district for the Snowshoe area.

Griffith voted against the initiative and said that separate public service districts would be “redundant.”

The letter mailed to the PSC on Monday strongly criticizes the “failings” of the PSD.

“The Commission and the community at large has come to believe that the PSD is, unfortunately, not able or not willing to address the actual need and purpose of this project in a comprehensive manner. Put simply, we have concluded that the PSD has failed with respect to this project,” the letter states in part.

Under state law, once a PSD is created, it is “a public corporation and political subdivsion of the state.” County commissions do not have veto power over PSD decisons.

But Saffer said conversations with IJDC officials indicated that funding could be stopped by a commission request.

“Mr. Fleming was speaking with Region 4, W.D. Smith, a couple of weeks ago and W.D. Smith told him and it was reported to me, by Mr. Fleming, that if we simply said we didn’t want the money, they wouldn’t give it any money,” he said. “So that’s what we’re doing. We wrote a letter that said ‘stop the money’ and let’s look at this with the brakes on.”

Despite the severe criticism of the PSD’s planning process, the commission has not pursued the removal of any board members.

County commissions are authorized, by state law, to petition the circuit court for removal of PSD board members, for cause. Grounds for removal include failure to attend meetings; failure to diligently pursue the PSD objectives; consistent violations of state law governing PSDs and any malfeasance in office.

Saffer said the commission is not actively considering removal of any board members, despite his concerns about the board members’ qualifications.

“It has its three members, who I don’t think really have the necessary time, education and experience reservoir – those three components – to fully deal with the huge issues that it has to resolve,” he said.

The county commission has been involved with the project in the past.

In March, 2005, the commission, composed of Griffith, Joel Callison and James Carpenter, did not act on the request by a property owner to move the plant from its proposed location on the Sharp Farm in Slaty Fork.

In April, 2007, the commission, composed of Griffith, Carpenter and Saffer, requested the PSD view alternative designs proposed by Eight Rivers Safe Development, a non-profit conservation group opposed to a plant at Slaty Fork.

No one from the IJDC responded to requests for comment.